The Young Turks - TYT Report Cited In Congress

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

A report from TYT's Ken Klippenstein has made it into the Congressional Record. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too.

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All right, welcome the Young Turks, Jake Uger, Anna Kasparian, with you guys. Got new lighting in the studio. I don't know how I feel about it yet. Okay. That's right. All right, so lots of fun for everybody. We're a dunk on Dave Rubin. We are.

We are. Look, it's fun, but it's also disastrous. For him. Yeah. I mean, what he did on Turk Carlson last night is beyond. embarrassing. So don't miss that story. We got stories as usual, like every day, Trump madness, but also Democratic primaries. So, and, oh, fun for everybody, postgame. Kyle Kalinsky's going to join us. Oh, no, the car driver. Oh, I still haven't come up with a nickname for you.

Oh, someone, someone did come up with, I'm sorry, this is spontaneous, so I don't have the person's Twitter handle, but on Twitter, someone called me Crusher Casparian. The Crusher, not the Not bad, not bad. All right, all right. I like to crush things. I know that's a genre before and that's not what I meant. I didn't even think about that. Now you've got the fur community and the crushing community behind you.

No judgment. No judgment. All right, anyways, we'll figure it out later. Let's do it. I actually wanted to start off by thanking everyone who watches this show, supports this show, and who contributed to our fundraising efforts to hire investigative journalists. Because your work and your support is literally changing. literally changing this country for the better. And we have an example of that. So Ken

Klippenstein, one of our investigative reporters, broke a story about how the Trump administration was focusing on black extremists in the country, black identity extremists, as opposed to right-wing extremists who have carried out real acts of violence, including mass shootings. And so he wrote an investigative report on it. And now as a result of his investigative reporting, his work is officially in the congressional record. So what you're about to watch is a House Homeland Security hearing on global threats. And Representative Cedric Richmond is questioning the FBI director, Christopher Ray, and outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAlean.

Okay, and so take a look at this honorable mention in the video. Let me just ask unanimous consent into the record. an October 6th, 2017 article from foreign policy entitled the FBI's new U.S. terrorist threat, black identity extremists, an August 8th, 2019 article by the Young Turks entitled Leaked FBI documents revealed Bureau's priorities under President Trump. But I will just conclude by asking your commitment to meet with us again, to give us an update of where we are, what it looks like. If, in fact, there have been arrest, surveillance, investigations on anybody under the old black identity extremists and now what it's consumed. And so I would just ask that you commit to briefing us again on that particular issue. We'd be happy to keep the dialogue going.

No, he really wouldn't, actually, because that report revealed that they're still tracking African Americans as threats when they don't appear to be, and they're now lumping them in with right-wing extremists, which are an actual and significant threat that he's testified about before. And there's some question as to the veracity of his earlier testimony. So it's a troubling question for the FBI director there. And look, but I want to double down on what Anna said. That's you guys.

You hired investigative reporters for us. They want to bring stories like this about how, look, the FBI has a long history of tracking African Americans in this country unjustly. And so to find out that they're still doing things that they claim that they're not doing, and that's because of the reporters that you guys help us hire, that's amazing. And that's how you actually get to solutions. And that's where we're out. That's why we're showing you the congressional hearing there because

reporters find out the news, the actual truth, the reality, and then people in government need to be held accountable for it, and it's happening right before your eyes. You guys did that. Exactly. And so I want to refer you guys to the story that Ken Klippenstein wrote. So let's take a quick look at the headline of the story, and you guys can find it at t.com. Leaked FBI documents reveal Bureau's priorities under Trump. Please check that out, along with all the other wonderful reporting at TYT. investigates. Right, and if you're watching this later on YouTube or Facebook, we'll have the link to the article

down below in the description box. You can always find our links in the description box and great work by Ken Kumpenstein there. All right, let's move on to the impeachment investigation. So yesterday, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vidman testified in the impeachment investigation. And as we all know at this point, the testimony was damning. He did say that he found Donald Trump's conversation with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky problematic, he actually reported it. However, there was something that wasn't reported prior to our show yesterday that I wanted

to share with you today. So apparently he testified that since he was one of the individuals listening in on the phone call, he wanted to make corrections to the transcript. And when he attempted to do so, on a few occasions, those corrections were dismissed. They were rejected. So let me give you the details. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vidman testified that the transcript, quote, omitted crucial words and phrases that he tried to restore in the transcript but was unable to.

The omissions, Colonel Vidman said, included Trump's assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joe Biden discussing Ukraine corruption and an explicit mention by Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board-employed Biden's son Hunter. Now, let's stop for a second because I think that that's incredibly important, especially the mention of Burisma, because I have heard members of the right wing use this argument that the summary of the phone call, which we've all seen, doesn't mention the oil company by name.

It doesn't mention Burisma. And according to what Colonel Vidman is saying here, he absolutely did mention Burisma. However, it was taken out of the transcript. I was curious about the first part, we'll get to that in a sec. But in the beginning, I thought the mention of Burisma in the actual call, but the non-mentioned of it in the so-called transcript was uninteresting because they did talk about both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and the company that he was on, so what difference does it make? But if it turns out the Republicans are using that as a talking point, somebody in the White

House must have thought, well, if we don't say the name of the company, then it's not technically illegal. And they're the ones who very likely gave that talking point to the Republicans. Now, does that talking point make any sense? No, there's no legal standard where you say, hey, that gas company in Ukraine that Hunter Biden was on the board of, but you don't say the name Burisma, you're not guilty. It's not a thing, it's not a thing. In fact, it's the kind of thing that a really dumb guy like Donald Trump might think,

and think, oh no, that's okay, we hid Burisma. We didn't put that in the transcript, so it was a perfect call. Now the second part, what recording of Biden, is that another conspiracy theory that Trump believes about how Ukraine is hiding servers that has Hillary Clinton's emails and they hide, do they, does he think that they have a video recording of Biden doing something wrong? Or are they referred to something that they know that we don't know of a recording? And that's why they put it away in the part that's hidden.

God, he's so strange. So by the way, and just to reiterate, the so-called transcript that we've all seen is not the actual transcript. It is a summary of the conversation based on the recollection of the note takers and the individuals who are listening to that phone call. The actual transcript was immediately moved. to a high security server, a private server that Donald Trump is refusing to release, even though he says that it was a perfect phone call.

So if it's a perfect phone call, why don't we see the actual verbatim transcript of the phone conversation that took place? Right. And look, guys, I've said this before, but I want you to realize why he's saying it's a perfect call. Because- He's stupid. You know, that's 100% true. But why would you refer to anything as a perfect call?

Well, what does that mean? What does it even mean? It means I executed it well, right? Well, what was it the thing that you were executing? Well, there's nothing in the call that it affects national security interests at all that helps America at all. It's just a call about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and whether they have some secret server affecting the 2016 election.

These are all things about Donald Trump, nothing to do with Ukraine, nothing do with America. So what did you execute well on the call? Well, in his stupid mind, he thinks he asked for the quid pro quo without saying it. And in the parts that he said like Burisma, they took it out. So you can't catch him on it. So that's why it was a perfect call. He perfectly executed the corruption without having his fingerprints on it. Now, of course, that's not remotely true, but that's what he thinks in his dumb little orange mind.

That's why he keeps calling it a perfect call. And remember, the phone call with Vladimir Zelensky is entirely separate from. from the text messages between EU ambassador Gordon Sunland and US ambassador Bill Taylor. In those text message exchanges, the quid pro quo is abundantly clear, and both Taylor and Sunland in their testimony made clear that they believed that there was a quid pro quo. 100%. All right, well, let's move on to some other news. Actually, why don't we take a break?

And then when we come back, we have a little more on the impeachment investigation. And then that wonderful story on Dave Rubin that we promise. Yeah, and the extra that we have on it is how Trump can be goaded into almost anything. That's why I get so frustrated Democrats, he's so easy. What a child he is. Just let me out him. If I get, you know, I don't know, maybe on Fox and France, we can change the whole dynamic of this in five minutes.

Anyway, we'll do that story when we come out. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fibing the Ruff-Eing the Republic, or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic, or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical

episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers than be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it. The New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school. For as the great philosopher, Yoda, once put it, You must unlearn what you have learned.

And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. All right, back on a young Turks. So I love eclectic miscellaneous comment here in the member section. TYT investigates has broken on a number of stories that have been picked up by others in

the media and now in the congressional record. Imagine what TYT could do with the resources that a CNN or MSNBC has? Now, by the way, both true and false. So let me just say, look, we have made your money last a long, long time. If you knew the finances of how that works, it's stunning how long we've made it last. But one other guy on our team is Ryan Grimm, he's a contributor, he's also the Washington Bureau of Chief of the Intercept. You know, he broke the Christine Blasey Ford story.

I mean, that is one of the biggest stories of the last two years, and Ryan did that. So our guys are unbelievable, unbelievable. So, but when I was at MSNBC, you know, we didn't, we had reporters. We had people who would follow campaigns around, et cetera, but when I asked for an investigative reporter to look into something that happened on air, they're like, what name so? I'm like, what do you mean? You're MSNBC, who are your investigative reporters? They're like, no, we just have Michael Isikoff, but he, we share him with NBC, and he's mainly

on, you know, for the main primetime news. One investigative reporter for all of NBC and MSNBC? Yeah, yeah. Remember, leading up to Donald Trump's presidency, all of these major news networks cut their investigative reporting units. They just, it's because it's expensive. Journalism is expensive, doing real journalism going out in the field, the travel, you know, the hotels, the accommodate, like, the action.

The actual investigative reporting is expensive. And so all of these major news networks decided, nah, we don't really need it. And I think that that partially led to the type of president that we have today. Yeah, and by the way, not only is it expensive, it also gets you in trouble. If you break stories about the government, that makes the government uncomfortable. And so if you want mergers approved, you better be careful. If there's other policy that you care about, and by the way, if you want access to politicians, then do you really want to investigate a reporting team?

So anyway, we love you guys for allowing us to have one. So let me give you some more quotes real quick. Cray Cuis suflay says, ooh, new lighting, TYT, stunning. Thank you, we appreciate it. On Twitter, Geetian Wolf doubles down and then says, Jenk looking like a mob boss tonight. Is that a good thing? I don't know. If you're comparing me to Trump, no, no, okay.

But if you're comparing me to like, I don't know, Robert De Niro. All right, I'll take it, you know what I'm saying? You're looking at me? You're looking at me? The gabby-goo. The gabby-goo. Okay, anyways, speaking of which, Terry Teeter, a teeter-totter German teacher writes in, the finishing move of Anahit Misak Kasparian should naturally be called the Anna-Hit.

Oh, okay, the Anna hit. It's hard, it's high, like. It's a great use of her name. Yeah. It doesn't roll off the tongue as much, but you're on to something, so I like the way you're thinking. All right, what's that? All right, well, just a quick mention about the Friday show. So as you guys know, we're doing something a little different with our Friday power panels.

Rather than watching it on the YouTube stream, we're gonna have it available for our members wherever you watch. If you want to watch live on our website, you can do that as you usually do, or you can watch the archive. However, for everyone else, we will be on Pluto TV, Zumo, the Roku channel, and YouTube TV. Those are the platforms that you can watch the show on, 6 p.m. Eastern time on November 1st. So that's what we're doing this week. Check it out.

Okay, so it's exclusively on those platforms this Friday. But you know, we're on those platforms every single day, 24-hour channel. You can catch all of our shows anytime you want on those channels. So make sure that you're checking that out. A lot of folks have those platforms now. And of course, if you're going to be a member and get the show anytime you want, tyt.com slash join. I found one more tweet that I like. Michael Bailey podcast, those werewolf and training rights in.

Possible nickname for Anna on TYT since she crushes people, the Anaconda. Because she don't want none unless you're progressive, son. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. It's good. All right, I like it. You guys are thinking. All right.

It was thanks to Anaconda. Donald Trump has a very important message for everyone, okay? If he wants to commit a crime, he is smart enough to commit a crime without anyone knowing about it, which is a curious thing for someone to say when he conducts chopper talk like this. China should start an investigation into the Biden. Because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. So I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens.

Now, as we all know, asking foreign governments to launch investigations into political opponents to give someone an edge in a re-election campaign is against the law. That's why he's facing an impeachment investigation. So why is Trump now arguing that he's smart enough to commit a crime? Well, it's actually in response to an editorial by the board, the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal. They wrote an interesting piece. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board argued that any talk of impeaching Trump is silly in large

part because the president is likely to bumbling to execute that kind of scandalous quid pro quo. That is so funny, I don't know if they watch the show. I have called Trump a serial bungler and a serial bumbler several times. It's amazing. And now here's the Wall Street Journal editorial board backing him up by saying he's just simply too stupid to commit these crimes effectively. The Wall Street Journal board, editorial board, is notoriously conservative.

So just keep that in mind. Let me actually read you an excerpt from what they wrote. Intriguingly, Mr. Bill Taylor says in his statement that many people in the administration opposed the Rudy Giuliani effort, including some in senior positions at the White House. This matters because it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid pro quo, policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government and most presidents at some point or another in office.

So apparently Trump saw that piece and he didn't like it, he got real salty about it. In fact, an anonymous White House source spoke to the Daily Beast and then another white House source corroborated it, and here's what the piece says. The president mentioned he had seen it, and then he started saying things like, what are they talking about? If I wanted to do quid pro quo, I would have done the damn quid pro quo, and then defended his intelligence and then talked about how perfect the call with Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky was. And then the source also said, he was clearly unhappy. He did not like the word inept. Okay, so you know that you're not very bright if you go around saying, I could commit crimes.

You know, I'm being investigated for committing a crime, but I could do it. And if I didn't do it, I would do it really smart. They're like people defending me by saying I didn't commit the crime because I'm too stupid. You see how I proved it? No, you didn't prove it. You actually proved how stupid you are by saying incredibly stupid things like, I could commit crimes. I'm the president, but I could commit crimes. I'm smart enough to commit crimes.

Who says I'm smart enough to commit crimes? Who says that? I guess a person who's like a smart person. Okay, so I wanna point to other things that Donald Trump has done that are not even related to this impeachment investigation, including signing the reimbursement check to Michael Cohen for the hush money payments that they paid to, you know, adult stars right up, right before the election. So there's that. There's also the fact that Donald Trump defrauded students with Trump University and he had to pay a $22 million settlement. One of the hardest parts of getting

older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight, 77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next

chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. The result of that, looks like he got caught there. If I was going to do a scam, it'd be smart enough to not get caught so I would have to pay $23 million. I would only pay $22 million. I'm not even done yet. Then there's the fact that he used his own charitable foundation to pay off his own settlements, which is also illegal. I mean, the list goes on and on. He's committed all sorts of crimes that he's paid some consequences for, I would argue

not enough. And so for him to say, oh, I'm smart enough to commit crimes and not get caught is ridiculous and lacks any and all self-awareness. Look, if they criticize the Clinton Foundation for taking money from other governments and And then using it for what everyone agrees is actually good causes, healthcare, you know, fighting poverty, et cetera. But they were like, hey, I don't know that you should take money from Saudi Arabia because they might be trying to influence you.

That's a fair and interesting point, right? Donald Trump took money for charity and then use it to pay his bills. Not to help with diseases or poverty or anything like that. He is a lifelong criminal, and if you did that with your charity, you'd be in prison, okay? One of the things he bought was a six foot portrait of himself. That's who Donald Trump is. If I was a criminal, I'd be a smart one. Like I'd run a charity where I didn't do any charity and kept buying portraits of myself because

he bought two. Okay, two different ones at two different times. Anyway, but you actually left out the biggest one. The conservatives have made this argument before and it was about obstruction. This was in the Mueller report, he told the White House. counsel, you must go lie to Congress. But the White House counsel at the time was ethical enough to say, no, I'm going to ignore your order because I'm not going to perjure myself.

I'm not going to commit that crime. And a lot of conservatives said, see, Trump was too inept to be able to actually finish the job of committing obstruction of justice. So if he was smarter and more competent at breaking the law, he would have got his White House counsel to break the law. But since the council didn't do it, then I guess he's okay because he's an idiot, right? So this is a common defense of Donald Trump, which I kind of love. And Anna, to go back to the very core of the issue here, you said in your intro, as we all know, that's a crime.

He literally doesn't know that. So he thinks the quid pro quo is a crime. That's why he keeps hiding the quid pro quo, although very badly at that. Now we've got witness after witness. Very smart, I'm very good at hiding the quid pro quo. Yet, when I told my ambassador to do the quid pro quo, but I said, shush, I hit it. I did the perfect shush. Okay, but anyway, he doesn't know that simply asking a foreign government, not just Ukraine,

but like you saw in the video, he asked China in front of international television, right? In front of everyone, in front of the whole world, please look into my political opponent. That is asking for help on your political campaign from a foreign government. It is illegal, but the moron doesn't know that. And so he's like, what do you mean? It was perfect the way I asked for them to help me with Biden. And if it was up to me, the Ukraine, I would do, I would have them investigate my political opponent too.

You just admitted another cry. Can I also say one thing? Look, I don't know if I'm really buying whether he, whether or not he, I think he knows that you can't ask a foreign government to dig up dirt on your political rival. Because what does he accuse Hillary Clinton of over and over again, that Hillary Clinton worked with a foreign government to dig up dirt on Donald Trump and Paul Manafort, remember? Yeah, but I think he's using that one as like a political talking point, but and kind of like, oh yeah, did that one does it back to you, ha ha, ha, you, I wasn't me, it was you

who did it, right? No, no, but he's been making this argument forever, I mean, even way before this impeachment investigation. But George Stephanopoulos was in the Oval Office interviewing him, and he asked him, you know that you can't, would you take an offer of help from a foreign government in your political game? And he flat out asked, he said, would you like, Trump's like, well, of course I would look at it. And Stephanopal's like, that's kind of a, I mean, you'd have to turn it over to the FBI,

wouldn't you? He's like, okay, maybe I'd do both. Maybe I look at it, then I turn it over to the FBI. No, not maybe I do, but he doesn't know. That's illegal. You can't do that. Of course you can't do that, but he doesn't know that. And so by the way, if you're a conservative going, see, the president is too stupid.

First of all, congratulations. Second of all, ignorance of the law is no excuse. If you broke the law and told the cops, it's okay, I didn't know it was illegal. You wouldn't get away with it. Well, there's one other story that proves just how stupid Donald Trump is. So let's talk about that real quick. So let's go to my one shot, yeah. So Donald Trump doesn't understand that Republicans do not want to talk about the substance

of the impeachment investigation because the testimony thus far by members of Trump's own administration is so damning that it's impossible to attack the substance of the impeachment investigation. So they have decided that they're going to go after and ridicule the process. of the impeachment investigation. And so a perfect example of how dumb Donald Trump is, is he is now publicly demanding that Republicans back him up when it comes to the substance of the impeachment investigation, and they can't.

So he's applying this pressure on them. He's, I'm sure, in the future, going to go after them by name if they don't support and defend him when it comes to the substance. And I just want to give you an example of a recent interview with Republican representative of Mark Amadeh and CNN's Manu Raju. Manu wants to ask him about the substance of the impeachment investigation, and take a look at how this Republican lawmaker handles the question. I had to ask him just a simple, straightforward question, whether or not the president was

appropriate for him to ask for Ukraine and then later asked for China to investigate his political rivals, and he dodged the question. Mr. Madre, though, the substance of the things that have come out is that the president asked for a public investigation into his rivals and also Ukraine aid was being withheld. And Bill Taylor testified, no, no, that's not my conclusion. I'm saying that's what's come out and everything that's come out. It sounds like a conclusion to me, so we disagree on the question. The president has asked for the Ukrainians to investigate the Biden. Is that okay? The president has asked for the whistleblower complaint to go through the normal processes, and we've seen nothing of that. So beyond that, when you say that you've made the conclusion or whatever, it's like you're a gifted guy because guess what? It isn't over and you already know what you think.

The rough transcript of the White House, the White House transcript that was released had President Trump asking President Zelensky to open an investigation to the Biden. Do you know if they've even got plans to call the whistleblower? Because I heard they didn't. Now, I don't know if that's true. But you're not answering my question about the substance of the allegation. Process, process. Let's talk about process. Even though the process has been completely lawful. It has been done correctly. The impeachment investigation doesn't simply consist of Democrats. You have Republicans in these closed door sessions where the testimony is taking place.

And again, you have members of Trump's own administration, including an individual who listed in on the call providing damning testimony indicating that Donald Trump was guilty of quid pro quo. So it's just hilarious to me to see Donald Trump apply this pressure on Republicans, and And then Republicans like fumbling and really failing all over the place when it comes to this story. Here's my reaction to that interview. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Why?

Because wow, even the most hardcore right-wing Republicans cannot defend them on the substance. They don't even want to talk about it on tape. How are they gonna go all this time without ever addressing the substance? So there's two parts of the interview that are relevant. is Manoraja asking, okay, he asked the Ukrainians for assistance in investigating Biden. That is not remotely in dispute. It's in the transcript or the semi-transcript that the Trump administration released. Donald Trump has said it on the air.

He is that he asked Ukraine to do it. He asked China to do it. So it is not at all in dispute. He's like, you're reaching a conclusion. I don't know, do words have any meaning anymore? So, look, I know that the Trump slash Fox cult, they don't care about facts at all. So I'm not talking to that 30% of the country. They just believe like, no, words don't mean anything.

Words mean the opposite of what they said. I mean, last night, Lou Dobbs said, or recently he said that Obama was the I president and Trump is the we president because Trump is too humble. Okay, words don't have meaning anymore, all right, I'm past it, right? For the other 70% of the country, everybody knows that that's exactly what he said. We can, we understand English, okay? So, but the second part's the most important, Congress was like, I don't want to say that it's okay.

Because if you do, I mean, imagine if he says, yes, I think it's okay for the president to ask a foreign government to look into his political opponent. Okay, then what's to stop his opponent from asking China, Canada, Russia, you name it, North Korea. Yeah, why don't you get me all this dirt on this congressman? He said on the record that it's totally okay. All right, if it's totally okay, let's see what you got. Oh, by the way, you guys want to go after KD. Hill?

China's got a lot of resources. Maybe they give me a lot of money to look into all of you guys and find out what kind of pictures you have. You want that? Now you want to see Republicans in a cold sweat panic? Okay, so no, it is illegal and the Republicans know it. This defense or non-defense of Donald Trump is untenantial. It's only a matter of time before they have to confess that it's right.

All right, let's move on to Dave Rubin. This is one of my favorite stories of the day because of how embarrassing it is for Rubin. So as wildfires rage in the state of California, Dave Rubin has decided that as a person currently residing in the state, he is going to go on Tucker Carlson's Fox show and show everyone that he can make anything about identity politics. PG&E strikes me as almost a metaphor for the destruction of the state. So here's the utility, which doesn't really know anything about its own infrastructure, but knows everything about the race of its employees? How did we get there? The problem right now is that everything, everything from academia to public utilities to politics,

everything that goes woke, that buys into this ridiculous progressive ideology that cares about what contractors are LGBT or how many black firemen we have or white this or Asian that. Everything that goes that road eventually breaks down. It is not how freedom is supposed to operate. What is supposed to happen, Tucker, imagine if your house was on fire. Would you care what the public utility or what the fire company, what contractor they brought in, what gender or sexuality or any of those things he or she was? I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous.

Who would care? And right now we've got a situation, of course you wouldn't care. The fires in California have nothing to do with diversity. Like the fact that he has made this tragedy into some identity politics issue is beyond me. In reality, PG&E is a private company with investors. And whenever you have a private company with investors, what is the most important thing? What is the objective for those investors? return on investment, right?

The profit motive. And so they have not upgraded the power grid. They have not done what was necessary to ensure that the power lines were secure, that they were safe. And as a result, they have gone bankrupt several times, several times, because they have been blamed, rightfully so, for a number of these wildfires. And so as a result of that liability and as a result of the settlements that they've had to pay, they've had to go bankrupt.

This has nothing to do with diversity. And I'm gonna go into the actual numbers and the details and the facts in just a minute. So that's a great point, Anna, just last night on the conversation, which is in the third hour of the Young Turks, I talked to Greg Pals exactly about this and how poorly the utilities are run in Northern California because they're private and not public. And so you should check that interview out at YouTube.com slash TYT conversation. But in terms, but that's I think the relatively, like that's the major point in terms of the substance of the fires and obviously climate change, which I'm going to get to in a second. But in terms of the main point about this appearance, do you see what they're doing?

Okay, so they always get somebody from that group to attack itself, right? So Dave happens to check off a couple of boxes here, but the most relevant one is at the end. So yes, he's from California. He hilariously pretends to be some sort of liberal, he says, classic liberal. I'm a classical liberal. I mean, I don't know what that means and I can't answer any questions about it, but I'm going to go ahead and say I'm a classical liberal. I'm the Diet Coke of liberals.

Okay, whatever you are, dude, of course you're not a liberal. It's hilarious and preposterous. And so, but the main reason he's brought on is if you notice the first group he attacked was LGBT people. And Dave's gay, so Tucker Carlson and Fox News goes, get me a gay puppet, someone with no soul at all who will betray the people, the group that he's in. Oh, Dave Rubin, perfect. What are we having him on for?

Oh, we're going to blame the fires on gay people. No, it's amazing. It is amazing. And for all the accusations that they lodged toward the left regarding how they make every issue about identity and identity politics, In reality, the only person who I've seen in the media who consistently relies on this identity politics argument is Dave Rubin. It's all he ever talks about.

He talks about the fact that he's gay married over and over again. No one cares, Dave, right? What I do care about is if you're gonna go on national television to do your little grifting maneuver, I mean, in the very least, read something. Read something. How many times is this guy gonna go on national television and embarrass himself by showing the entire world, how unknowledgeable he is. But guys, did you, I mean, did you catch the other part?

He literally blamed black firefighters. No, it wasn't climate change that has the planet burning all across the planet. This Siberian forest is on fire. The winter forest of Alaska was on fire. We've had the top 16 hottest years in the last 17 years. The whole planet is on fire. But Dave Rubin and Tucker Carlson thinks that's the fault of black firefighters. People who are literally putting their lives at risk to fight these wildfires, right?

They're the ones that they're gonna point fingers at and blame. It's just disgusting. It's also disgusting to exploit a real tragedy like this. I mean, so many people have lost their homes. In the case of the fire in Paradise, California, about 85 people died. I mean, this is a serious issue. And you know, whenever it comes to private industry, something that Naomi Klein says and Jenks says it a lot on the show as well, is they will privatize the gains, socialize the losses,

and that's exactly what's happening in the state of California right now. In fact, Governor Gavin Newsome has proposed something that I completely disagree with. It is essentially a way of bailing out companies like PG&E who refused to spend their earnings on updating the power grid and have decided to pad their pockets with that money instead. So, for instance, Gavin Newsom is proposing a multi-billion dollar wildfire fund to help California's utilities, private utilities specifically, cover mounting fire-related liability costs that have threatened their financial health. Oh, is there financial health in trouble?

No, this is- What happened to capitalism? No, you guys, Gavin Newsom, this is a horrible proposal and he should be called out on it. Why are we bailing them out? Why should the Californian taxpayer bail out a company that has destroyed the lives of so many in the state? And we also have to pay for the cost of the fire. So we have to pay for the cost of the fire. They don't pay for that cost.

And so if you're wondering why we're blaming the utility. I mean, first of all, they're mismanagement in terms of having to turn off massive areas of California's power over and over again. I remember, that's what I loved about this country when I first came. I was eight years old and I couldn't, and I'd come from Turkey. where we would have the power go out all the time. And I was like, oh, the power never goes out in America. It's an amazing place.

Turns now we're in a third world country, not because of the public utilities, but because of the private companies. That's exactly right. And it's not just that, they cause the fires, because if you don't upgrade your equipment, it keeps falling in the forest and that's what causes the fire a lot of times. And climate change makes it worse because of the wind patterns, et cetera. The wind patterns in California, we had been doing with the drought, yes. Exactly.

So let me give you some more details on what PG&E is guilty of. And again, the idea of bailing them out is ridiculous. So PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January after its role in sparking wildfires created more than $30 billion in potential liabilities. So rightfully so, they get sued because they haven't upgraded their equipment and they have to pay out these settlements and then they end up going bankrupt. Concerns about massive wildfire or wildfire related liability costs are also weighing on California's to other major investor-owned utilities, Edison International's Southern California Edison

and Sempera Energy's San Diego, gas and electric. So last year's campfire, California's deadliest ever killed 85 people and destroyed the town of paradise. State investigators in May concluded that PG and E equipment sparked the fire. They're privately owned utilities, and this is the reason why we're having this issue in California right now, in addition to climate change, which exacerbates it. So for him to say that it's about, you know, diversity and black firefighters is disgusting. By the way, this is not how capitalism is supposed to work at all. As Greg Powell's pointed out last night in the interview, you don't have a choice of which utility

you could use. It's not like you're like, oh, you know what, I'm in Northern California, I'm not going to use PG&E, I'll use the other brand. There is no other brand. There's only one line that you could use for power. So where's the free market? That's why a lot of these utilities are turned into public utilities, because this is not a market that has natural competition.

See, but Adam Smith wrote about this, and everyone who's ever studied economics knows about this, but it doesn't matter. We have such wholesale corruption in this country. They're like, remember, during Iraq war, they did no bid contracts for almost the entirety of the war for a decade. They did no bid contracts. What part of that is capitalist? No, it's all an excuse to enrich the elite and the powerful.

I'm not even done yet, okay? Because this number is important. State investigators have tied PG&E equipment to 19 wildfires in the past two years. And homeowners, businesses, cities, insurers, and others are seeking compensation for billions and damages from the company, an issue that will now be resolved as part of the bankruptcy process. So they are guilty of sparking numerous fires. And how is Governor Gavin Newsome going to help bail them out? Our utility bills are going to have an extra surcharge, okay?

No, no, no. All of these utilities should be public and there's no reason why we should bail out a company that has not only destroyed people's lives, but destroyed businesses. I mean, these blackouts in Northern California have really hurt businesses in the area. For instance, there's a Halloween store that hasn't had power in the most important week of the year. Yeah, and so look, we bring that up because the only thing that Republicans ever care about is business.

So look, you're also hurting business. Look, one more thing from my perspective on this, and I didn't know this until the interview last night. Most of the power lines in a lot of places are underneath the ground. But PG&E in Northern California doesn't want to spend the money to put them underground. So they have them above ground. But a lot of the area that they are above is the woods. So when a power line falls, it falls in the woods and starts a massive fire.

Now if they actually paid the money to put it underground, we wouldn't have as many fires. But then their shareholders wouldn't make as much money. And remember, they keep the profits. But when a giant fire starts, they put all the costs onto the taxpayer. of putting out the fire, all the damage that's caused. And then on top of that, they go bail me out now. On top of it, I want more money. So this is not remotely capitalism.

It is socialism for the rich. And we're all sick of it. And in this case in California, it's literally killing us. And then they bring on clowns like Dave Rubin and Tucker Carlson to distract you with a circus and blame black and gay people for the fires. It doesn't get any more despicable than that? So we have more video on this, but we gotta take a break. So I'm going to place some more of this video in our members-only postgame show.

You can become a member by going to t.t.com slash join. Members help to make this show happen. So thank you to them, and we will continue this conversation in the post game. I wanna, we're gonna have a, I wanna, I can't wait to see those videos. And Kyle Kalinsky is going to join us in that post game. So they'll be even more dunking on the Dave Rubens and the Tucker Carlson's of the world. TYT.com slash join. Don't miss it.

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All right, back on a young Turks, as usual, our members have brilliant comments. I bathe in a very stable geniuses tear, says if Trump's not smart enough to commit a crime, then he's not smart enough to be president. Yeah, isn't that a hilarious defense by Wall Street Journal? Remember, the president's an idiot, too stupid to commit crimes. That's why we're in full support of him. Well, what's even worse about that op-ed is they say his intention was to commit a quid pro quo. But under their weird interpretation, he was too stupid to successfully carry that out, which is why it's silly to impeach him.

So he intended to break the law. Yeah, now substitute another crime, see if it makes sense. Now, he intended to murder someone, but he accidentally didn't load the gun because he's an idiot. So he did squeeze the trigger and he totally intended to kill someone. But since he didn't do it, we shouldn't impeach him. Does it still make sense? This is crazy. Sharon says, I love how Jenk cracks himself up.

Me too, Sharon. See, I just almost said it again. Sina Hagaboon writes in, Anna's nickname, Saltine. That was pretty good. I like the nickname, the explanation I could do without. This person says, because she breaks crackers off every day. backers off every day. I don't know what exact reference that is, but okay.

And then I got Alex Hinojosa writing in on Twitter, I'll do this real quick. Preview of Trump's trial, prosecutors, Trump committed a crime, Trump's lawyer, Trump didn't know that these were crimes. Trump, yes, I did know, I'm a very smart person, of course I know what crimes are. Judge, we're done here. I'm a very stable genius. By the way, in one of the tweets where he declared himself a very stable genius, he also said, I'm also very good looking.

Agree to disagree. And who says that? Let alone which president, who on planet Earth goes around saying, now remember how smart I am? Plus, I'm really good looking. Doesn't Bart have like a sound clip of you talking about how hot you are? Yeah, but I joke around, do I look hot to you? You, okay, it's an obvious joke.

But if I was going around going like, no, no, I'm the skinniest man in America. Okay. Anyways, Alex, great tweet, nicely done. I'm pleading guilty to being too good looking. There's a guy on planet Earth who says that for real, and he's the president of the United States. And he's not good looking. Right.

I think that's the hard thing. He might even weigh more than I do. Yeah, you know, anyway, I don't want to get into it, but let's move on to important stuff, okay? So there's a raging debate in regard to lowering the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. It's happening not among Democrats versus Republicans, but centrist Democrats versus progressives. Now this is all in regard to Nancy Pelosi's bill to lower the price of prescription drugs, but it is already an incredibly watered down and weak piece of legislation.

Progressives are attempting to strengthen it, but they are getting a lot of resistance from so-called Blue Dog Democrats. So a group of centrists, including Representative Stephanie Murphy, co-chairwoman of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, has warned leadership that some moderate Democrats might vote against the bill if it moves any further to the left. So I just want to talk a little bit about who Stephanie Murphy is. She is a Democratic lawmaker from Orlando, Florida, and we should look at her campaign donations a little bit.

So when it comes to campaign donations from the health care industry between 2015 and 2020, she has received about $367,57,573. I only mention that because here's the thing, lowering the cost of pharmaceutical drugs is not a partisan issue. So if you're gonna come at anyone with this nonsense argument about how I'm in a moderate district, I'm facing re-election, what if I don't get reelected? Really? Are you going to make an argument that conservative voters want high pharmaceutical drug prices? Pretty sure they don't.

Anyway, let's move on to another representative, Anthony Brindisi. The further left you go with drug pricing bills. It just means it's only going to be a House-only bill and a Democrat-only bill. That's not helping people in my district. Let's take a look at how much he received from the healthcare industry. Now, this is only from 2020, but so far he's received nearly $40,000 from the health care industry, and he is facing a tough reelection. And so again, same argument toward him.

And, Jank, you interviewed Representative Rokana about this legislation yesterday. Do you want to talk about it a little bit? Yeah, so look, all the articles that talk about this don't talk about the real issue, which is the corruption. So to Anna's point about partisanship or not, well, there's a big bifurcation there. So the Republican voters also want lower drug prices. That's why from time to time Donald Trump will talk about lower drug prices. Because I mean, you go find me, anyone in your neighborhood that wants higher drug prices.

You won't be able to do it, that's a maniacal thing to say, right? So, on the other hand, Republican politicians will not consider this bill under any circumstance, right? So Mitch McConnell says dead on arrival, will never vote on the Senate, I don't care if it only covers one drug. Because what they're doing is the so-called moderacy, in fact, the corporate Democrats are saying, no, in the beginning they say they should only cover 25 drugs. Why can we only negotiate prices on 25 drugs?

There's thousands of drugs in the country. The progressives fought and fought, they got it to 35 drugs. And then the progressives refused to listen because the House leadership told him, bow your head. We're gonna go with a compromise here so that the corporate Democrats can continue to take that money, okay? Now of course they never say those words, but that brings me to Rokana. So he was on the program last night. So third hour of the young Turks is when we do interviews, the conversation. Now he actually mentioned the money, which is almost never done in politics.

Listen, why are the corporate Democrats doing it? Why are they limiting the number of drugs we can negotiate on? The only thing honestly that I can think of is the pharmaceutical companies influence and that there has been some deal that look, we're not going to go beyond these amount of drugs. And the pharmaceutical companies are running disingenuous attack ads against some of our members of Congress, which is what I don't understand. I mean, they're running attack ads anyway on the 25 drugs. So you might as well then understand that they're not going to be the allies in this.

They are going to be the opposition. So look, Representative Rokana, as usual, showing courage here by telling you the reality that all voters know, but no one in politics and no one in the media will acknowledge. So it's, of course, it's the drug company money. That's who we're actually negotiating with. We're talking about, hey, how can we pretend to solve this problem so we can get more voters, but not actually solve it. And the lobbyists say, oh, you know, pretend to negotiate with us on these 25 drugs that we don't

really care that much about, all right? And by the way, we'll fight you on that anyway. And to pull to Congressman Conno's point there, we're going to run ads against you anyway, right? Exactly. But these corporate Democrats go, oh, my district is purple, and the Republican voter, in that district love higher drug prices. And so we want to make sure that we appeal to them. And then the other guy says, oh, no, we don't want this to be Democrat only and House

only. But McConnell already told you he will not consider it under any circumstance. So those are all definitively lies. He called it, Senator Mitch McConnell said that being able to negotiate for lower drug prices, which is essentially what this bill is, amounts to socialism. He said that. He thinks that this is socialism. Being able to negotiate for better drug prices is what he considers socialism.

He's a disgusting human being and as corrupt as you could possibly be. No, the government saying, no, they can charge you anything they want and you're not allowed to negotiate on behalf of the American people when you're for drug prices for Medicare, Medicaid that we all pay into with our taxes. He said not being able to negotiate is the exact opposite of capitalism. And that's because he's a corrupt crony capitalist. But so are the Democrats, like the Blue Dog Democrats that are actually doing this fraud of a bill. And so I love that the progressives are fighting back and they should be more aggressive about it. And look, even when they take $40,000, the drug companies didn't give that to you for their health or for your health or for charity. They did it to buy you and it worked.

But Stephanie Murphy, what did she take over $360,000? You can't find me a single real American outside of Washington, D.C. That doesn't think that that's a bribe. Okay, I know it's legal because of the Supreme Court decisions, but it is a legalized bribe, and it totally worked. Absolutely. So I want to just quickly talk about what progressives have been pushing for so you can understand, you know, the clear differences. But then I also want to talk about the, I don't even know if it's the naive nature of Nancy Pelosi because she can't be this naive.

But nonetheless, let me tell you what progressives are doing. They're pushing for a range of changes such as increasing the minimum number of drugs that will be subject to negotiation up from 35 and fully repealing the ban on Medicare negotiating drug prices. And as the bill stands now, it creates an exception allowing a limited number of drugs to be negotiated rather than fully repealing the bill. It should be fully repealed. Also, Representative Jaya Paul's amendment adopted in committee to ensure it's not stripped

out of the final bill because of objections by moderates would extend protections against drug price increases to people in private employer-sponsored insurance plans, not just those on Medicare. So it would actually apply to everyone, which I think is, that makes all the sense in the world. Now, just quickly, what is Nancy Pelosi saying? this is going to blow your mind. Or maybe it won't if you've been watching the show for a while. Pelosi's office has held out hope that President Trump might endorse her bill.

Given his rhetoric against high drug prices and some centrists want to move toward common ground with Republicans to increase those odds. So Pelosi's strategy has moved to common ground with Trump to try to pass an incredibly weak watered down bill in the hopes that McConnell, first of all, he won't even get to Trump if McConnell blocks it, that McConnell changes his mind because he was convinced because you reached out the Republicans enough? Nobody can actually believe that. That's not a real thing. And Pelosi, I think, is incredibly ineffectual, but I don't think she's that unintelligent.

No, that is just brazen corruption, saying, yeah, my members take corporate drug money. I take drug company money, and we revel in it. And so we're gonna play this Kabuki theater with the corrupt Republicans. It's not the Democrats versus Republicans. It's the corporate politicians versus the non-corporate politicians. If you don't take over PAC money, all of a sudden, you've got progressives who are fighters, who are strong and smart going, give me a real reason. Give me a real reason why we shouldn't negotiate all drug prices on behalf of the American people.

We're the ones paying the bill in Medicare and Medicaid. Name me one reason, Mark Pocan, the leader of the Progressive Congress along with Jayapal, is saying give me one reason why we should negotiate all drug prices. Now one corporate Democrat can give a real reason. And by the way, if you say you want to find common ground with Republicans, great. Get me enough Republicans in the Senate, get me, McConnell's saying yes, I'll introduce it, and enough Republicans that'll vote with the Democrats on your version of the bill saying publicly, yes, we will vote for it, then we'll say, hey, look, I don't love it, but I get it,

at least we could pass it, and it's a compromise. That's the usual trick they play, but here they got nothing to stand out. You're not going to be able to find a single Republican, because don't get me wrong. Most of the Democratic Party is deeply corrupt, but the Republican Party is 100% corrupt. Every single one of them is corrupt. So they all take drug company money, and they will bow their heads and do it as their corporate overlords command of them, including President Trump. When we come back from the break, there is a video featuring Elizabeth Warren talking about

Medicare for All. Her rhetoric there is a little worrisome. And then later, we're going to talk about Bernie Sanders and a CNBC interview where they try to fearmonger about labels. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.